Ethnographic fieldwork

The most important and notable part of ethnographic research is observations, through which the ethnographer participates in the field she is studying. In this study I have been observing the Northern Lights tours from the viewpoint of the tourists, buying the trips like they have, although the main reason for my participation has been to do research and observations and not be a tourist in that way the other tourists have. I have not intended in this study to study the tourists expectations or experiences per se, although that would be a good objective for further studies, especially if combined with direct interviews. Nevertheless, by observing and taking part in the activities and reflecting on my own experiences, with the help of autoethnographic practices, I have been able to get an insight view on the visible cultural meaning and practices, bringing an analytical approach to the cultural phenomenon in question. (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983)

In a sense all social research is a form of participant observation, because we cannot study the social without being part of it (see e.g. Hammersley & Atkinson 1983). Therefore I am not describing nor using participant observation as a particular research technique, but rather as a mode of being-in-the-world or in this exact case being-in-the-field characteristic of myself as a researcher.

In social sciences the twentieth century brought increasing recognition that the problem of understanding is not restricted to the study of past times and other societies and rather it applies to the study of one’s own surroundings (Hammersley and Atkinson 1994). The epistemology of participant observation rests on the principle of interaction and the reciprocity of perspectives between social actors. (Hammersley & Atkinson 1983)

Observation is also justified because it can better knot other data gathering methods together and through observation things can be seen in and in connection to their right environment (Tuomi &

Sarajärvi 2002). When c to be interpreted, but it can also show the behaviour related to norms better than pure interviews, which easily relate more to the norms itself (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2002).

Generally observations deepens the knowledge created through other data collection and analysing, making the knowledge more multiple and through-full. (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2002).

Observations are a good way to gather data when there are little previous knowledge about the phenomenon at hand (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2002). When there are no previous knowledge, it is hard to make pre-assumptions and in example structured questions and it is more accurate to seek for creating more through-full knowledge through observations, knowledge which can be later used on

drafting a new research with different methods. Observations can also work as a connecting link between other ways of data collection, helping to draw more through-full picture of the phenomenon at hand (Tuomi & Sarajärvi 2002, 83). Observing techniques also create data which should be more norm free than data gathered by interviews, although it might also be so that the interviews my also help to understand the behaviour or the reasons behind the behaviours which is observed. In my research the latter was the case when we interviewed the guides day after the trip we has been observing. In interview we got an explanation for the behaviour of the guide, the reason for which I had assumed to be different than it really was. In these situations the different methods might show the difference between aimed behaviour and reality, or then they might give way to interpret the situation better.

As there are no prior research on the ANT’s of Northern Lights tourism and I will be analysing a phenomenon in its real-life context and environment, this method is appropriate. When combined with ANT, it will allow me to study the phenomenon in its multiple, heterogenous entity. Further on, the analysis have been a constant process during the fieldwork and afterwards, during which I have reflected and shared my thoughts with other researchers and supervisors to gain more reflexivity, which strengthens the validity of this research, as described in next chapter.

The data was collected in collaboration in a reserach group appointed by project Winter (Annex1.).

The participant observations and interviews were completed during the winter season of 2014, in February and March. As a participant I observed and interacted with tourists and guides during nine trips, three of which in Iceland, in Reykjavik and Akureyri, four of which in Norway, Tromsø and Alta, and two in Finland, Muonio and Rovamiemi. In total six focus group interviews and conversations were conducted with the guides and the entrepreneurs and the interviews were later on transcribed by the author and other members of the research group and combined with the field notes. In this thesis I have used data from four of these interviews, since those were the ones where I participated and could thereof observe those situations also. Field notes were recorded and transcribed by the author, concentrating on the thoughts and reflections. These concepts were compared, reflected and adapted during the initial rounds of data collection and analysis, in a group of researcher in the project group (Annex 1) and in final stage the process was completed with an evaluation of its overall value which was further supported by the reflexivity adapted during the research process and data collection.

Like Outi Rantala in her dissertation on commercial tourism practices in Lappish forest (2011), I am using ethnographic methodology in which I have divided my research process on three phases, in and around which I move back and forth. On the first phase I will be on field, observing the phenomenon and conducting interviews, after which I will analyse the data produced, followed by the final phase of writing, in which I create the story of actor-networks of Northern Lights tourism in Iceland, Norway and Finland. Mostly my research is following this order, but there are times when I go back to the field, although not in the same purpose, like when I go for a hike in the area where I was observing the tourists earlier on, or follow through media what is happening now on my fields and also when I was on the field I already created some of the pieces of the story which I have written down in this thesis. The rigour, reliability and objectivity of the qualitative research are achieved through two different aspects of what might be called natural science methodology:

replicability and validity (Krippendorf 2004). This has been sought through a level and multi-phased reflexivity. Through triangulation, based on the multiplicity of ethnography, data of different kind has been systemically compared, which, according to Hammersley and Atkinson (1983, 24) is the most effective manner in which validity can be handled and achieved.

The theory chose has also given me the framework for analysis. ANT, in a way Callon, Latour and Law has conceptualised it, is a analytical framework, which borrows from the semiotics and categorisation. ANT gives me the tools for analysing the phenomenon, represented in the data I have collected, with which I am able to analyse and categorise the practices and orderings of the actors without any pre-assumptions of the roles and the abilities with which the actors construct their acts. (see e.g. Latour 1999). In the analysing phase I have carefully identified the parts of the data which shows traces of the practices and orderings of the actors. In a way I have done my own translation process, in the actor-network of my thesis process, first by identifying the actors, one of which I am myself, from the data collected but also already on the field. When writing down and translating my field notes I have already made orderings on choosing the parts in which I am concentrating most and leaving some parts away. The process has its limits, both external and internal, including time, money and the abilities of me as a researcher and therefore it has not been my intention or not even possible in all the means to collect or analyse all the data available on the field. Nevertheless I have kept in mind that there are no pre-assumptions of the roles and abilities nor the power of the actors and therefore I have in my analysis concentrated more on the performances and practices rather than the actors.

Data from which I have picked up my findings has been collected during three fieldwork periods in Iceland, Norway and Finland in February and March 2014. Fieldwork has been described by C.

Michaell Hall (2011, 7) as one of the defining approaches of academic research. Furthermore the theoretical lense that I apply affects what I leave in and what I ignore (Hall 2011, 16). Hence I will not try to theorise the phenomenon itself, but rather use the methodological theory as a way to conceptualise the phenomenon and offer more knowledge about Northern Lights tourism. In addition the ethical space occurs and should be noted inside and on the field, created by “formal and informal ethics generated by institutions and their cultures as well as personal ethos of the researcher that develop out of social relationships developed in the field, and existing relationships” (Hall 2011, 14). While in field I have kept the ethics in mind, in which I hope helps my own empirical experience of the environment, culture and people in these spaces. Like Jenny Chio (2011, 217) I would like to point out the usefulness and importance to acknowledge and even embrace the curious position of the tourism researcher as both a host and a guest in fieldwork situations. As a host I transform the space I am observing to a field in which I do my research and as a host I am invited to the space and situations as a curious researcher, who as to mutually respect and value the space and the people in it.

Descriptions of social activity are results of being able to participate in it, in which the observer and participants share the mutual knowledge, gained through actions which constitute and reconstitute the social world (Giddens 1982, 15). As a researcher I am all the time engaging myself in situations as an observing actor, although the intensity and scale of my acts varies. On the one situation I act as a tourist, purchasing the product and playing the game with the same rules as other tourists, despite of which keeping in mind my special role as a researcher, who has her own individualistic reasons and purposes for her acts. Although acting like tourist and doing the same things as the tourists, I am a researcher who does not share the same leisure intentions and desires as the tourists.

Therefore it would not be accurate to use and analyse this data collected by observations to understand the behaviour and intentions of the tourists. I can observe what they are doing and how they perform their acts in real-life situations and I can reflect on my own feelings and experiences on the field and how I was performing my act, but because of the fact that I do not share all the same characteristics of the tourists at that field, I will not be reflecting the tourist experiences.

Ethnography is a method which is fact is not a method. Ethnography is a combination of different methods and for me it worked as a set of guidelines for the research. Ethnography is a way to

theorise the research process - an idea about how we do research (Skeggs 1995, 192). In ethnographic research I involve myself in the research, as a researcher and observator, even as an actor. My role in research is fluid, changing from student and reader to tourist and traveller, to observer, interviewer, communicator, analyser, writer and researcher. In ethnographic study I focus on experience and practice, making an account of the development of relationships between me, the researcher, and the researched. My skills and competences as a researcher, as well as the field(s) I am working on, develop and change during the research process. Nevertheless, the most important characteristic of ethnographic research is its close relationship to theory, which comes from the fact that theory directs the crucial methodological decisions of the research, in the first place by creating a reason and research environment for ethnography. (Skeggs 1995, 192-193).

Beverley Skeggs has argued in 1995, based on her research experiences, that the time in which the research takes place, researcher’s social location and access to theories is central to the motivations and framing of the research. For me this research is a study project, part of my Master studies in which I am partly supposed to use and showcase the skills and competencies my previous studies and curriculum has taught me, but mostly this a project of learning by doing. Conducting my fieldwork in a group of more experienced researchers and professors, I was all the time imposing more information on theories and concepts. I was and still am positioned by and positioning myself in relation to my chosen theory and other theories, which rise from what i read, who I talk to and with, my institutional and physical location, what my colleagues read and do and even on from my own personal feelings, which Skeggs (1995, 196) describes to be the result of in-built theoretical insecurity in ethnography (Skeggs 1995, 195-196). The content I have gathered and which I have analysed does not change, but the way I relate and position myself and my research to it changes and evolves. Skeggs (1995, 196) argues that this is the value of ethnography - the way in which researcher is continually exposed to changes, explaining processes rather than facts.

Following the notion of how it is more useful to think about the knowledge being produced through different discursive sites in which the researchers and the researched have different access to discursive resources (Skeggs 1995, 201). I have been imposed to and I have had access to different theories, concepts and explanations which differ from the ones my researched persons and situations have. This thesis and analysis has been shaped by my position and knowledge as a researcher and I analyse and understand the phenomenon and situations through that position of a tourism researcher. I have had an access to certain explanations and theories which create a lens

through which understand the phenomenon at hand. I was not expecting my respondents or the observed people to speak with the same concepts and my intention was not to seek for or identify the different discursive resources, but to apply the methodological theory to the information created on and gathered from the field. In other ways, my thesis is the result of a process which describes the way I understand the Northern Light tourism, based on my theoretical, methodological and discursive resources and potential.

Ethnography is a well known and tested methodology for producing theories, but it is also a way to descriptions and explanations, which create better understanding on the phenomenon at hand. One thing in common among the different ethnographic works is the production of text, which, according to Hammersley and Atkinson (2007, 190) leads to an understanding of ethnographic analysis as a form of writing. Ethnographic methodology has guided me through a process in which I on this final stage have produced a written ethnographic analysis.

Ethnography has originated as an anthropological method for studying distant cultures and communities, which in its earliest form overlooked the mediated interactions, movements, connections and connectivity (see e.g. Wittel 2002, Molz 2012). In its current form, ethnographic research allows the researcher to re-envision the field as mobile and fluid, making it multi-sited.

This development of ethnographic methodology has allowed researchers to develop further concepts like virtual ethnography and ethnography which is well suited for studies on mobilities and tourism entities. Multi-sited ethnography privileges connections and networks (Hannerz 2013), which requires researcher to follow flows, involving variety of techniques, including travelling along with tourists, meaning that my research continues back home. This entails me to follow also the communication flows of digital and virtual travel (Molz 2012, 20); I have also observed what and how people share their experiences through social media and how firms create and manage these virtual spaces for participation and sharing. Like Molz in her study (2012, 21) I have involved in my research techniques moving, communicating and networking, by downloading applications to my mobile phone and corresponded online and in person with other tourists and the firms. Social media and mobile technologies proved to be a part of an technology as an agency in the actor-networks I was studying, but they were also important tools of the research. Nevertheless I have not fully engaged in mobile virtual ethnography, like Molz (2012, 22), but I have used it as a part of my methodological scope, to be able to see the phenomenon in wider perspective. Molz (2012, 36) has argued that tourism researchers must engage mobile methods to follow the emerging patterns of on

the move sociability in which technology combines with tourism practices in many ways. The virtual ethnography allows me to use techniques which account my research field as multi-sited, not just geographically but also across virtual sites. With virtual ethnography and observations I have been able to trace this relationship in which tourists and companies use technology as a materialised way of sightseeing, which organises behaviour and objects.

With the ethical epistemology of tourism research we mean the way of knowing which aims at goodness, usefulness, fairness and which is practiced openly and in line. As researchers we actively shape our research through our choices and the possibilities we are given (Ren, Pritchard & Morgan 2010). Like Northern Lights tourism, my research works in a network of multiple players, in which my personal characteristics and chemistry between me and the other actors of the field work close together creating and sharing knowledge of Northern Lights tourism (Ren, Pritchard & Morgan 2010).

Focus group interviews are a kind of organised conversations, in which a group of people is gathered to a place to have a conversation which is focused around a topic or topics but which is not structured (see eg. Valtonen 2009). The data I have analysed in this thesis is gathered from four focus group interviews, two of which in Iceland, one in Norway and one in Finland. The interviews lasted approximately 1 hour each and they were moderated by the leader of the project Winter (Annex 1). The groups included guides and entrepreneurs organising and leading Northern Lights tours and the reason for setting up the groups and interviews were to gather data for a better understanding of the views and opinions of Northern Lights tourism. For me the data gathered from these interviews worked as support for the data gathered from the field observations. The interviews worked as a forum in which the practices of the guides got their concrete explanations and through which I could get information which would support and challenge the practices I had and would observe on the field. I also need to highlight that the interviews were made while on the field and therefore there is not really a clear division between the interviews and other methodologies but rather they all were included in my set of fieldwork research techniques.

I, as a tourism research student, am working and acting from the tourism researchers point of view.

I, as a tourism research student, am working and acting from the tourism researchers point of view.